•Suggestions for ways to involve students, teachers, and parents in
communicating progress toward acquiring the Habits of Mind.
•Descriptions from schools, teachers, and administrators about how
they have incorporated the Habits of Mind into their practice.
•Examples of the effects that the Habits of Mind have had on stu-
dents, staffs, individual teachers, and their work, as well as on the culture
of the school.
•Descriptions of qualities of leadership necessary for the Habits of
Mind to become successfully infused into school cultures and classrooms.
Our true intent for this book, however, is far more panoramic, perva-
sive, and long-range. It works at two levels. The first level encompasses
immediate and practical considerations that promote using the Habits of
Mind in classrooms and schools every day. The second level addresses a
larger, more elevated concern for creating a learning culture that consid-
ers the Habits of Mind as central to building a thoughtful community and
world. We have divided the book into separate sections, each addressing
the levels as follows:
Part I: Discovering and Exploring Habits of Mind
Level 1:Defining the Habits of Mind and understanding the signifi-
cance of developing these habits as a part of lifelong learning.
Level 2:Encouraging schools and communities to elevate their level
and broaden their scope of curricular outcomes by focusing on more
essential, enduring life span learnings.
Part II: Building a Thought-Full Environment
Level 1:Learning how to teach the habits directly and to reinforce
them throughout the curriculum.
Level 2:Enhancing instructional decision making to employ content
not as an end of instruction but as a vehicle for activating and engag-
ing the mind.
Part III: Assessing and Reporting on Habits of Mind
Level 1:Learning about a range of techniques and strategies for gath-
ering evidence of students’ growth in and performance of the Habits
of Mind.
Preface xix